Wild Paths Festival

2022 line-up TBA

Wild Paths Festival is a ground-breaking new event for the region (East Anglia). It's a new breed of festival, presenting the best in live music from indie, hip-hop and neo-soul, to post-punk and new-wave jazz and pairing it with themed after-parties, conferences, supper clubs, art fairs and a whole lot more.

The festival descends on Norwich for 4 days in October, taking over 22 of the city's best-loved venues, and a host of other DIY spaces, including a Shoe Factory and a TV Studio. Featuring over 200 live acts, 60 conference speakers, artists, drag-queens, tattooists and DJ's, it's a celebration of music, food, art and culture... and the beautiful city of Norwich. Founded by a collective of young creatives, this pioneering new multi-venue festival - and the team behind it - has quickly gained a reputation for presenting events that harbour a sense of community, innovation and inclusivity.

In 2021 the team coordinated, booked, staffed and organised the whole city-wide event and received an outpouring of positive press coverage.

The Wild Paths ethos is projected through its efforts to tackle climate issues and challenge outdated attitudes surrounding gender and minority group representation. In 2019 and 2021 it achieved its goal of going single-use plastic free across the whole festival site and in 2022 the team are looking to make Wild Paths carbon neutral by working in conjunction with Ecolibrium and other like-minded climate organisations. We also launched our up-cycled merchandise initiative at Wild Paths 2021, sourcing all of our official festival merch from a vintage wholesaler and printing the festival graphics onto an array of vintage t-shirts - drastically reducing our festivals carbon footprint. On top of this we projected artist testimonials and video content provided by our partners Climate Live onto venue walls and stage backdrops at the festival (motivating our audiences to engage with the climate crisis).

In September 2020 amidst a global pandemic the team managed to safely deliver a two-day, socially-distanced, greenfield festival; Wild Fields. The festival, which featured 320 boutique 'pods', presented a line-up of 47% female acts, 19% mixed and 35% male acts and was championed by the Keychange 50/50 group as 'a beacon of change in an industry that drastically needs it'.

The conferences feature keynote speakers, music industry pros, artists and esteemed guests chatting about everything from current musical trends and tour stories to production techniques and sustainability. Gilles Peterson joined us to discuss his new book 'Lockdown FM'.

Theon Cross and Emma-Jean Thackray played their unique breed of progressive jazz in St Laurence Church (a repurposed event space, where we also featured the famous late-night Wild Paths Jazz Jam!) We transformed an old shoe factory into a two-floor venue with a VIP and artist zone (featuring ping pong tables and an artist bar). If all this isn't enough, we also facilitated a number of supper clubs at unique locations across the city, such as Artel's 5 course vegetarian taster menu (with local and foraged ingredients!).

It's a truly unique festival!

Disabled Facilities: Some venues are accessible and feature facilities for those with disabilities - please see individual venue websites for more info